Pro-environmental behaviour developments locally: Eco-schools complementary communication instruments for greening community

When aiming to study pro-environmental behavior (PEB) developments at the local municipal level in Latvia, there were two complementary studies employed: 1- main local stakeholder groups interviewing in two town municipalities to study their existing PEB practice, especially obstacles and related municipal governance instruments; 2-questionnaire for about 100 Eco-schools (EcoS) coordinators in Latvia to study schools existing PEB practice within school grounds, but especially their orientation towards and collaboration with local community and with the whole municipality towards PEB in the public environment. In spite of existing, at least basic, knowledge and even motivation (willingness) to act environmentally friendly, there are a range of obstacles, which could be classified in groups and, complementary, directly associated also with six classes of governance instruments to employ to overcome those obstacles – infrastructure instruments, economic-financial, communication ones, as well as administrative, planning, political and legal instruments. Even infrastructure and economic-financial obstacles are mentioned as dominating, they are not always limiting as often are the communication, particularly, psychological obstacles, what means that efficient and complementary development of various communication instruments as information and education, participation and PEB application/demonstration into practice can make a change, particularly when targeting main stakeholder groups selectively. This locally based PEB change could be importantly facilitated comparatively effectively by EcoS employing communication-psychological instruments, incl. PEB, as have been demonstrated by selected EcoS pro-community activities examples and their evaluations. Activities, projects and campaigns of EcoS and students’ behavior also in their households are not only supporting formal environmental education, but also triggering often non-active municipal leaders and managers towards necessary change into EcoS immediate community, and more and more so impacting also whole municipal PEB.